I love to be scared at the movies, so I couldn't wait to see US, writer/director Jordan Peele's follow up to his 2017 satirical horror hit GET OUT, which earned him an Oscar for Best Original screenplay. US is a different creature; with an evocative premise, and a cast to take it and run with it, [...]
A pair of movies now playing at a cineplex near you wear their agendas on their sleeves: each re-tells a true story, skewers its villains, and brings its audience right up close to the imagined scenes of the action whose outcome we already know. Director/co-writer Oliver Stone's SNOWDEN comes with a careful central performance by Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Edward Snowden, computer wiz and infrastructure analyst for the National [...]
MONEY MONSTER the new film directed by Jodie Foster starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts--is as phony as a three dollar bill. It's a cornball, ham-fisted, heapin' helpin' of preposterousity--and though that's not a real word, it is nonetheless a perfect descriptor for this "not a real movie." Within five minutes I was getting a whiff of the cheesiness, sniffing out [...]
A few more good ones left to see this summer and one circling the drain... See MISTRESS AMERICA! Co-writer/director Noah Baumbach's and his muse/co-writer/star Greta Gerwig's hilarious ode to finding your path through and post college. Freshman Tracy (Lola Kirke) is floundering in her first semester and connects with her soon to be older "stepsister by marriage" Brooke [...]
Here are two movies to lighten up a summer day-- ALOHA boasts a first rate cast BRADLEY COOPER, EMMA STONE, and RACHEL McADAMS in an offbeat Hawaiian love triangle written/directed by the quirky Cameron Crowe. At his best he gave us JERRY MAGUIRE and ALMOST FAMOUS and at his worst gave us ZOO. ALOHA falls somewhere [...]
I've had women on the brain at the movies lately, and we are out there in significant numbers this season along with the boys of summer. I happened to see two sequels MAD MAX: FURY ROAD and PITCH PERFECT 2 on the same day and fully expected to tolerate the former and enjoy the latter. Not even close. PITCH "imperfect" began with a crude joke, meandered [...]
Yes it's been a long cold winter -- but let's not focus on that-- how about a movie to pull our focus so that we don't even notice! Which brings me to FOCUS starring one of the world's biggest box office stars WILL SMITH and gorgeous Aussie MARGOT ROBBIE, who left the wolves howling on Wall Street [...]
Here's my take on the Oscar-nominated best-actresses and the movies they star in, STILL playing at a theater near you! See them before the Oscars are handed out on 2/22! TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT Marion Cotillard (Best Actress Oscar winner for LA VIE EN ROSE) stars in “Two Days, One Night” (in French with English subtitles), her glamor (but not her luminosity) tamped [...]
Having seen THE IMITATION GAME starring Benedict Cumberbatch, I now consider myself an official Cumbercookie, I mean Cumberbunny, er Cumberbabe-- or perhaps, most aptly, because I am of a critical bent, “Cumberbitch.” I am late to this party and thus not alone in Cumberland whose boundaries have been spreading since the actor hit our shores in [...]
It's a sad, strange story, and it's hard to believe it's true: FOXCATCHER is a tale of three men-- two Olympic wrestling brothers, and the very rich man who covets them. Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo play Mark and Dave Schultz who won Olympic gold medals in wrestling, Dave also acting as trainer to his younger brother Mark. Enter Steve Carell as John [...]
